# Democrats should thank Trump for one thing: he showed that money isn't necessary **URL:** \ **Category:** Politics & Elections\ **Created:** [January 16, 2017, 6:05am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/democrats-should-thank-trump-for-one-thing-he-showed-that-money-isnt-necessary/777296 "2017-01-16T06:05:00Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 2
**Author:** ![Velocity](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/velocity/32/18006_2.png) [@Velocity](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Velocity)\ **Post date:** [January 16, 2017, 7:30pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/democrats-should-thank-trump-for-one-thing-he-showed-that-money-isnt-necessary/777296/21 "2017-01-16T19:30:10Z")
Free publicity. Didn’t the media give Trump $3 billion in free airtime/coverage or something like that? Talking about him nonstop? The guy didn’t need to run many ads; everyone knew who he was. ---
**Author:** ![foolsguinea](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/foolsguinea/32/14751_2.png) [@foolsguinea](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/foolsguinea)\ **Post date:** [January 17, 2017, 5:07am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/democrats-should-thank-trump-for-one-thing-he-showed-that-money-isnt-necessary/777296/22 "2017-01-17T05:07:51Z")
> [@Jack\_Batty](#): > > So, I say we run Anthony Weiner in 2020 with the slogan: “Fuck it. They ran Trump.” I want Weiner to run to be Sherrod Brown’s VP. BROWN/WEINER 2020 ---
**Author:** ![Budget\_Player\_Cadet](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/budget_player_cadet/32/205_2.png) [@Budget\_Player\_Cadet](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Budget_Player_Cadet)\ **Post date:** [January 17, 2017, 5:49am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/democrats-should-thank-trump-for-one-thing-he-showed-that-money-isnt-necessary/777296/23 "2017-01-17T05:49:22Z")
> [@Okrahoma](#): > > Obviously, a lot of people didn’t want to vote for a “politico” anymore. Including Democrats. Right, they wanted an inexperienced neophyte. One of the few things I can truly still hope for from this disaster is that they realize what a _terrible_ idea that this was. ---
**Author:** ![Biffster](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/biffster/32/339_2.png) [@Biffster](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Biffster)\ **Post date:** [January 17, 2017, 6:09am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/democrats-should-thank-trump-for-one-thing-he-showed-that-money-isnt-necessary/777296/24 "2017-01-17T06:09:33Z")
> [@ITR\_champion](#): > > Democrats are clear about the fact that they don’t like it when corporations and the super-rich pour money into politics. Countless threads on this forum, and blog posts and editorials elsewhere, dealing with the Koch Brothers and the _Citizens United_ decision, testify to that. > > Democrats also raise tons and tons of money. In 2008, [Barack Obama set records](http://politicalticker.blogs.cnn.com/2008/10/19/obama-shatters-monthly-fundraising-record/). In 2012, [he broke his own record](http://washington.cbslocal.com/2012/12/07/obama-sets-all-time-fundraising-record-crushed-final-romney-totals/). In 2016, [Hillary shattered that record](http://www.cnn.com/2016/10/25/politics/hillary-clinton-fundraisers-election-2016/). Many have pointed out how little time she spent in key states like Wisconsin, and the reason was that she was busy raising money instead. The Democrats are not shy about courting the super-rich. [Obama once had a fundraiser](http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2785161/Obama-slams-GOP-party-billionaires-attends-32k-head-fundraiser-hosted-billionaire-property-tycoon-named-Rich-Richman.html) at the home of a billionaire property tycoon named Rich Richman. Cost: $32,400 per person. But that’s a trifle compared to the [$353,400](https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2016/apr/17/george-clooney-hillary-clinton-fundraiser-obscene-money) that was charged to sit with Hillary and Hollywood celebrities last April. > > So it would seem that the only argument that Democrats can make would go like this: raising truckloads of money from the rich is bad, but we need to win, and in order to win we need to raise truckloads of money from the rich. And thus they end up doing what they say they hate, and Democrats end up lining up to vote for candidates who are floating on piles of money, time after time. > > But now Donald Trump has shown up and proved that you can win an election without devoting all your time to fundraising. Indeed, without devoting barely any time to it. During the Republican primary, he faced a huge number of challengers backed by huge sums of money. At the lead was Jeb Bush, whose SuperPAC raised a nine-figure sum. Trump spent virtually nothing. We all know how that ended: Trump got 1,543 delegates while Jeb got 4. In the general election campaign Trump did raise money, but not with the same consuming zeal that Hillary did. Counting the money he raised and SuperPAC money, Trump spend about half as much as Hillary. > > Of course he had the advantage of being a billionaire who gave his own campaign millions. However, the lesson to take away from the election is that winning the spending game _does not matter_. Hillary [rolled a tidal wave of money through Florida, Pennsylvania, Ohio, and North Carolina, sometimes outspending Trump by 20 to 1](http://abcnews.go.com/Politics/hillary-clinton-slated-spend-53-times-donald-trump/story?id=42230361). She lost all four of those states. > > It’s worth noting that this isn’t the only race where big spending didn’t lead to victory. For example, in the 2014 North Carolina Senate Race, [Democrat Kay Hagan outspent her opponent and lost anyway](http://www.bizjournals.com/triangle/news/2014/11/05/hagan-tillis-us-senate-campaign-spending-nc.html). > > So it seems pretty clear. Democrats have been liberated from the need to soil themselves with obsessive fundraising from corporations and billionaires. The approach of trying to grab billions of dollars from those sources each cycle, and then use that money to flood the airwaves with advertising clearly isn’t working, so the Democrats might as well abandon it. Switch to putting limits on how much they’ll take from the corporate sources and how much one billionaire can give. Focus on small donors. (Bernie Sanders has shown that you can raise a respectable amount this way.) Then the Democrats won’t look so hypocritical and won’t be vulnerable to the “crooked” attack that Trump used so effectively. It seems ironic that you say money isn’t a factor, when Trump himself is a self-described billionaire. I say self-described because I believe in reality he is nowhere near as rich as he pretends to be. Do you know how money you’d have to LOSE to go from billionaire to bankruptcy? Multiple times?? Of course, the Donald gains and loses other people’s money, so it probably doesn’t affect him personally. Or the lifestyle to which he and his sycophants have become accustomed to. Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk ---
**Author:** ![octopus](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/octopus/32/3716_2.png) [@octopus](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/octopus)\ **Post date:** [January 17, 2017, 6:34am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/democrats-should-thank-trump-for-one-thing-he-showed-that-money-isnt-necessary/777296/25 "2017-01-17T06:34:51Z")
> [@BlankSlate](#): > > Trump only proved that you don’t need to spend a lot of money to win the moron vote. It’s not applicable. So the genius vote needs 100s of millions of advertising directed its way for what reason? ---
**Author:** ![Starving\_Artist](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/aeb1de/32.png) [@Starving\_Artist](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Starving_Artist)\ **Post date:** [January 17, 2017, 6:51am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/democrats-should-thank-trump-for-one-thing-he-showed-that-money-isnt-necessary/777296/26 "2017-01-17T06:51:53Z")
> [@Ravenman](#): > > I think I have known for a long time that you don’t have to raise tons of money to get the second-most votes in an election. Can we knock it off with this please? There is no such election. It. doesn’t. exist. It never has and it probably never will. As **John Mace** once pointed out to **elucidator** , the situation is somewhat analogous to who wins the World Series. The World Series winner is the team that wins the most contests, not the team who scores the most runs overall. In this country we hold 51 contests (each state plus D.C.), or elections, to decide who will be president. Trump was elected because he won at least 270 electoral votes (or ‘points’) from his wins in those 51 elections. The total number of people voting in those elections is as irrelevant and beside the point as the total number of runs scored by the losing team in the World Series. ---
**Author:** ![coremelt](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/4491bb/32.png) [@coremelt](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/coremelt)\ **Post date:** [January 17, 2017, 6:59am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/democrats-should-thank-trump-for-one-thing-he-showed-that-money-isnt-necessary/777296/27 "2017-01-17T06:59:35Z")
> [@Starving\_Artist](#): > > Can we knock it off with this please? There is no such election. It. doesn’t. exist. It never has and it probably never will. No I don’t think we should knock it off. There is such a thing called a Mandate. The majority of the population can truthfully say they don’t support Trump’s values or goals. The amount Trump lost the popular vote by is an important data point, and those opposing his agenda are justified to bring it up where-ever possible. ---
**Author:** ![Starving\_Artist](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/aeb1de/32.png) [@Starving\_Artist](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Starving_Artist)\ **Post date:** [January 17, 2017, 7:10am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/democrats-should-thank-trump-for-one-thing-he-showed-that-money-isnt-necessary/777296/28 "2017-01-17T07:10:48Z")
To get back to the OP, Trump won because he (or, more accurately, Ivanka’s husband Jared Kushner) ran a modern, cost-effective and technologically savvy campaign that focused on winning the presidency by winning the electoral college. Hillary’s campaign on the other hand was stodgy, traditional, clumsy and expensive. Yes, Trump got lots of free advertising from the media in the beginning, but he also drew virtually unanimous bad publicity and condemnation from that same media once he became the nominee. So it’s specious to claim free publicity from the press is partially responsible for his victory. [Here’s a link](http://www.forbes.com/sites/stevenbertoni/2016/11/22/exclusive-interview-how-jared-kushner-won-trump-the-white-house/#7d4128532f50) to a Forbes’ article outlining how Kushner ran Trump’s campaign. It is fascinating and enlightening, and anyone interested in la true and factual account of how Trump won the election on a shoestring rather than hewing to traditional methods would be well advised to read it. ---
**Author:** ![Starving\_Artist](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/aeb1de/32.png) [@Starving\_Artist](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Starving_Artist)\ **Post date:** [January 17, 2017, 7:17am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/democrats-should-thank-trump-for-one-thing-he-showed-that-money-isnt-necessary/777296/29 "2017-01-17T07:17:28Z")
> [@coremelt](#): > > No I don’t think we should knock it off. There is such a thing called a Mandate. The majority of the population can truthfully say they don’t support Trump’s values or goals. The amount Trump lost the popular vote by is an important data point, and those opposing his agenda are justified to bring it up where-ever possible. If you want to trumpet the fact that she scored the equivalent of the most runs in a world series, that’s fine. But you cannot with any factual basis claim that she won the most votes in ‘the election’, because no such election exists. ---
**Author:** ![Kimstu](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/k/ecd19e/32.png) [@Kimstu](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Kimstu)\ **Post date:** [January 17, 2017, 7:59am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/democrats-should-thank-trump-for-one-thing-he-showed-that-money-isnt-necessary/777296/30 "2017-01-17T07:59:01Z")
> [@Starving\_Artist](#): > > To get back to the OP, Trump won because he (or, more accurately, Ivanka’s husband Jared Kushner) ran a modern, cost-effective and technologically savvy campaign Well, that plus he was a well-known celebrity and reality-TV star with a long track record of very newsworthy buffoonery and gaffes, which kept him in the center of the media spotlight. These antics included, among other notorious incidents: - denying that ex-POW John McCain was a war hero; - making fun of the looks of the female Republican candidate; - telling lies about “thousands of Arabs” cheering in New Jersey at the fall of the Twin Towers; - making fun of a disabled reporter who called his bluff on those lies; - calling for a total ban on Muslim immigration; - requesting supporters at his rallies to beat up protestors and promising to pay any legal costs thus incurred; - accusing, with no evidence, the father of another Republican candidate of having conspired in the JFK assassination. Seriously, the Trump campaign is not a reliable blueprint for electoral success for any serious politician. It worked for Trump, but nobody with less established notoriety or higher information levels or ethical standards should expect to be able to imitate it. ---
**Author:** ![coremelt](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/4491bb/32.png) [@coremelt](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/coremelt)\ **Post date:** [January 17, 2017, 8:18am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/democrats-should-thank-trump-for-one-thing-he-showed-that-money-isnt-necessary/777296/31 "2017-01-17T08:18:46Z")
> [@Starving\_Artist](#): > > If you want to trumpet the fact that she scored the equivalent of the most runs in a world series, that’s fine. But you cannot with any factual basis claim that she won the most votes in ‘the election’, because no such election exists. It exists rightly or wrongly in popular conception, therefore it exists. Oh and also there is this: [![](https://i.redd.it/apk3mk5sm6ay.jpg) ](https://i.redd.it/apk3mk5sm6ay.jpg) Trump’s twitter rant when he thought (incorrectly) that Romney won the popular election. ---
**Author:** ![Ravenman](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/ravenman/32/2929_2.png) [@Ravenman](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Ravenman)\ **Post date:** [January 17, 2017, 11:24am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/democrats-should-thank-trump-for-one-thing-he-showed-that-money-isnt-necessary/777296/32 "2017-01-17T11:24:22Z")
> [@Starving\_Artist](#): > > Can we knock it off with this please? There is no such election. It. doesn’t. exist. It never has and it probably never will. Trump got the second-most votes in the election. It’s a fact. You can google it. ---
**Author:** ![Starving\_Artist](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/aeb1de/32.png) [@Starving\_Artist](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Starving_Artist)\ **Post date:** [January 17, 2017, 4:56pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/democrats-should-thank-trump-for-one-thing-he-showed-that-money-isnt-necessary/777296/33 "2017-01-17T16:56:40Z")
> [@Ravenman](#): > > Trump got the second-most votes in the election. It’s a fact. You can google it. Perhaps you would be kind enough to tell me just which election that was. I can’t seem to find it on Google or anywhere else. > [@coremelt](#): > > It exists rightly or wrongly in popular conception, therefore it exists. I see. So delusion = reality? Somehow I’m of the opinion that this runs contrary to the stated mission of the board. ---
**Author:** ![elucidator](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/8edcca/32.png) [@elucidator](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/elucidator)\ **Post date:** [January 17, 2017, 5:20pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/democrats-should-thank-trump-for-one-thing-he-showed-that-money-isnt-necessary/777296/34 "2017-01-17T17:20:16Z")
Well, gee, if only you had said something sooner, maybe point out liberal hypocrisies, or something like that. ---
**Author:** ![Left\_Hand\_of\_Dorkness](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/left_hand_of_dorkness/32/7156_2.png) [@Left\_Hand\_of\_Dorkness](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Left_Hand_of_Dorkness)\ **Post date:** [January 17, 2017, 5:51pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/democrats-should-thank-trump-for-one-thing-he-showed-that-money-isnt-necessary/777296/35 "2017-01-17T17:51:31Z")
> [@Starving\_Artist](#): > > Can we knock it off with this please? There is no such election. It. doesn’t. exist. It never has and it probably never will. As an alternative, maybe you can knock it off your own self? Please? There is such an election. The popular vote doesn’t determine the winner, but it’s absolutely a statistic about the election that’s gathered, and it’s important for folks’ perception of how much of a mandate a person has who wins the electoral college, and a lot of people have detailed and sophisticated arguments about why the popular vote SHOULD determine the winner of the election. Your repeated insistence that the popular vote is a fantasy is ridiculous. ---
**Author:** ![Lobohan](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/lobohan/32/79_2.png) [@Lobohan](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Lobohan)\ **Post date:** [January 17, 2017, 5:52pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/democrats-should-thank-trump-for-one-thing-he-showed-that-money-isnt-necessary/777296/36 "2017-01-17T17:52:07Z")
Money doesn’t buy you an election. It shifts it in your direction. Money can push it some few percentage points. The OP’s argument is similar to a Climate Denialist asserting that since the temp went down on a particular year AGW isn’t happening. If the election is going to be 55/45 shifting it two or three points is meaningless. If it’s going to be 50/50, it really matters. Trump got a lot of free press because of his celebrity and the odious nature of nearly everything that came out of his upper-pucker. So you’d really have to figure the value of the constant coverage he got to compare the amount spent in any meaningful way. The idea that because this election went for Trump that money in politics isn’t a problem is utterly inept thinking. ---
**Author:** ![Ravenman](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/ravenman/32/2929_2.png) [@Ravenman](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Ravenman)\ **Post date:** [January 17, 2017, 6:10pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/democrats-should-thank-trump-for-one-thing-he-showed-that-money-isnt-necessary/777296/37 "2017-01-17T18:10:29Z")
> [@Starving\_Artist](#): > > Perhaps you would be kind enough to tell me just which election that was. I can’t seem to find it on Google or anywhere else. What search terms did you use? That might be the problem. ---
**Author:** ![Starving\_Artist](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/aeb1de/32.png) [@Starving\_Artist](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Starving_Artist)\ **Post date:** [January 17, 2017, 6:32pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/democrats-should-thank-trump-for-one-thing-he-showed-that-money-isnt-necessary/777296/38 "2017-01-17T18:32:54Z")
> [@Left\_Hand\_of\_Dorkness](#): > > As an alternative, maybe you can knock it off your own self? Please? > > There is such an election. Then perhaps you can tell me what it’s called? And what its rules are? And what happens when someone wins it? As for myself, a so-called election that has no name, no rules, no effect, and exists only one’s mind can’t really be called an election. ---
**Author:** ![theR](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/977dab/32.png) [@theR](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/theR)\ **Post date:** [January 17, 2017, 6:53pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/democrats-should-thank-trump-for-one-thing-he-showed-that-money-isnt-necessary/777296/39 "2017-01-17T18:53:09Z")
I hardly think raising and spending 600M to beat someone who raised 1.1B means “money isn’t necessary.” Trump raised half as much, but that’s still a lot of money. To get an honest accounting, we’d also have to see how much foreign nations spent on directly influencing the election for each candidate. I can tell you with high confidence which candidate got more campaign spending from other another nation. ---
**Author:** ![Tamerlane](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/tamerlane/32/7602_2.png) [@Tamerlane](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Tamerlane)\ **Post date:** [January 17, 2017, 7:28pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/democrats-should-thank-trump-for-one-thing-he-showed-that-money-isnt-necessary/777296/40 "2017-01-17T19:28:03Z")
> [@coremelt](#): > > There is such a thing called a Mandate. I’ve never liked this concept, not at any point in my life or with any president. For one thing it is so amorphously defined anybody can claim any politician either does or does not have one. Under one definition simple victory is enough no matter what the margin, but under others the concept of “large” victories arise. Which might work in Australia where everyone has to vote, _if_ you could somehow just nail down how large “large” is. But it hardly applies in the United States where so many do not bother to vote at all. Personally I think we should stop talking about mandates altogether, at least in terms of presidential elections. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/democrats-should-thank-trump-for-one-thing-he-showed-that-money-isnt-necessary/777296.md?page=1) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/democrats-should-thank-trump-for-one-thing-he-showed-that-money-isnt-necessary/777296.md?page=3)